The
Italian composer, Giovanni Maria Trabaci, was one of the most
important musical innovators in the 17th century. As a skilled
organist, his major church appointments in the Naples area provided
him with the financial stability to write 165 works for the keyboard.
Many serve the multiple purpose of being adaptable for organ,
harpsichord or instrumental groups. In technical accomplishment
and harmonic experimentation they were to surpass other works
composed at that time, and became the earliest examples of the
musical period subsequently defined as the ‘Baroque’ era.

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Giovanni Maria Trabaci
(c.1575-1647)

Keyboard Music: Book II (1615)

In the appendix to his
Scherzi Musicali Claudio Monteverdi wrote his own
self-defence to the criticisms made against him by
the theorist Artusi, though he had it signed by his
brother Giulio Cesare. There he clearly speaks of
a ‘second practice’ of composition,
on the principle that certain rules had to be overcome
if one wished to express the affect of the text. I
believe it is necessary to speak of a similar need
in our own age, though this time in the sphere of performance.
It is a need that calls for practical (and not only
musicological) application, especially in a field still
as uncertain as that of music improperly called ‘early’.

The initial phase, that
of the discovery and scrupulous observance of the
musical document, can today be said to have been
established. Now, however, it needs to be followed
by a second phase: one showing awareness of the relativity
of the evidence, which is often completed, if not
contradicted, by other sources. The idea of a single
manner of performing the music is therefore a profoundly
wrong one. Music is a science that must be brought
to life by poetry. Too often in ‘early’ music
courses and teaching in general, one is merely offered
the facts, and no space is allowed for the subsequent
passage of musical interpretation.

In this respect, for example,
the training of organists tends to be excessively
sectorial and mainly ‘Bachian’.
Excessive delight is taken in the more "cerebral" aspects
of Bach’s work, for example, the mystique of
numbers, without considering his sublime ability to
use technique as a means to attain the highest peaks
of emotional power: in short, too much lobotomy and
too few gastroscopes of Bach’s genius. It fails
to take into account the complexities of technique
and interpretation, which in the past were hardly ever
practised on the organ itself, for the obvious technological
reason that there was no electricity. Nor does one
sufficiently consider Bach’s immense respect
for, and debt to, the preceding tradition, which led
his contemporaries to judge him as old-fashioned and
incomprehensible.

Too often we find claims to exclusive interpretational
supremacy, whereas in piano playing or symphonic music,
for example, widely diverging interpretations are accepted
without any difficulty at all. In this the record critics
also bear a small share of the blame, when they pass
judgement on interpretations that are born of painstaking
study and deeply pondered experiences, but may, unfortunately,
not be in line with current fashions.

To return to Trabaci, I first wish to draw attention
to my research into instrumental variety, an aspect
typically in line with the Renaissance and Baroque
aesthetic. I used the two grand organs of the Basilica
of S. Petronio in Bologna (Lorenzo da Prato 1471 and
Baldassarre Malamini 1595) and that of Giovanni Cipri
(1556) in the church of S. Martino in the same city,
as well as the instruments from my own collection:
a Neapolitan positive organ (Felice Cimino 1702), a
Neapolitan spinettone (anonymous late eighteenth century)
and copies of a late seventeenth-century Italian harpsichord
and regal (B. Formentelli). In addition, I have tried
to offer the vocal models (Gregorian and madrigalistic)
that clarify the compositions as fully as possible.

The music of Trabaci,
like that of Frescobaldi, is only partly designed
for the organ. In fact the term Intavolatura di organo
(organ tablature) in Frescobaldi’s
Toccatas points merely to the form of writing, that
for a keyboard instrument. As can be gathered from
Trabaci’s Preface to the Readers of Book I, this
is music that can be played on any instrument, but
more properly on the organ and harpsichord. The same
idea is confirmed in the Preface to Book II, although
it would seem from certain comments that here the composer
prefers the harpsichord. In fact at the head of a composition
certainly intended for the organ, the Cento versi sopra
li Otto Toni Ecclesiastici (A hundred versets on the
eight church modes), written ‘to delight the
world and the professional organist’ (per giovare
al mondo, ed a chi fa professione d’Organista),
he does not hesitate to add that ‘since Nature, … in
such fair order, has found an instrument of such worth
as the harpsichord, composed of so many keys, I had
to, and was able to, make use of it on this sort of
occasion, as I have already done’ (già che
la Natura … … con sì bell’ordine
ha trovato un istrumento di tanto valore, com’è il
Cimbalo composto di tanti tasti … … io
dovea, e poteva in questa sorte d’occasione avvalermene,
come già ho fatto).

In another comment, this
time before the Partite artificiose sopra il Tenor
di Zefiro, he particularly praises this instrument,
and he advises that it should also be employed where
the use of the harp, the instrument most favoured
by Spanish-Neapolitan taste, is indicated: ‘if
in this present volume some things are ascribed to
the harp, this is not to deny the use of the harpsichord,
since the harpsichord is the lord of all the instruments
in the world, and with it everything can easily be
played’ (se in questo presente libro stà intitolate
alcune cose per l’Arpa, non per questo soprasedisca
il Cimbalo, perchè il Cimbalo è Signor
di tutti gl’istromenti del mondo, ed in lei [sic]
si possono sonare ogni cosa con facilità). On
the present recording, therefore, I decided to offer
two versions, for harpsichord and for harp, and I thank
my good friend Andrew Lawrence King for joining me:
in both poetic insight and technique, he is surely
the artist best suited to this repertoire, which he
tackles in absolutely the right spirit, as is abundantly
shown by his reputation.

Trabaci supplies the performer
with detailed instructions of phrasing, such as ‘allarga la battuta’ (broaden
the beat), as well as the occasional witty comment,
such as ‘Statti sano!’ (Be of good cheer).
The repeats are indicated by elegant little hands,
used also by Domenico Scarlatti for the changes of
keyboard in the three Sonatas for chamber organ (see
my notes to Domenico Scarlatti, Complete Sonatas, Sergio
Vartolo organ and harpsichord, CD Stradivarius Str
33502 and to Domenico Scarlatti, Sonatas for harpsichord
and mandolin, Sergio Vartolo harpsichord, Ugo Orlandi
mandolin, CD Bongiovanni GB 5122/23-2). In Book II
he accompanies the polyphonic text with detailed indications
on the conduct of the voice parts (‘due fughe
insieme’, ‘riversi della fuga principale’,
etc.), and in the Preface he even offers a Tavola de
i passi e delle cose più notabile (Table of
the passages and things more worthy of notice). Trabaci
is particularly innovative in his chromaticism and
he also resorts to bold thematic writing: see, for
example, the entry of the soprano in the third bar
of the Verso Decimo, Quarto tono, creating the clash
of an A against an E minor chord.

Trabaci shows exceptional mastery of counterpoint,
and I have been able to find only a few passages in
Book II where fault may be found: for example, octaves
in contrary motion between bass and alto (Verso Duodecimo,
Quarto Tono, third-last bar), parallel octaves between
bass and alto (Verso Undecimo, Quinto Tono, fifth bar)
and tritones in the tenor (Verso Quinto, Quarto Tono,
third and fourth bars).

Comparison of Trabaci’s keyboard music with
that of his contemporary Frescobaldi is very marked:
all the genres treated by the Ferrarese composer are
included in Trabaci’s work. We also note that
Frescobaldi’s master, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, was
highly valued by Gesualdo of Venosa, and therefore
musical exchanges between Ferrara and Naples must have
been close. Trabaci even invokes the authority of Luzzaschi
to justify the possible irregularity of the answer
in the Ricercare del VII tono con tre fughe of Book
II: ‘Luzzaschi uses this at the beginning of
his Ricercare in the 7th mode of Book III’ (Luzasco
usa questo in principio del suo 7. Recercat. lib. 3).

In particular the Ricercate
have their counterpart in Frescobaldi’s Capricci and Ricercari, the
Canzoni francesi in Frescobaldi’s works of the
same name, and the Cento Versi sopra li Otto finali
Ecclesiastici (Hundred Versets on the Eight Ecclesiastical
Finals) in the Inni (Hymns) of Book II and then in
the Kyries of the Fiori Musicali. The comparison is
even more conspicuous in the secular genres, such as
the Book I Partite sopra Ruggero, a theme also dear
to Frescobaldi, the Partite sopra Fedele (in Frescobaldi
under the name of Follia), the Gagliarde, the Canzoni
and the Madrigali Passagiati. Of the last category,
that of the embellished madrigal, Ancidetemi pur (a
piece that was ‘diminished’ many a time
in the Neapolitan area) makes much of the expressive,
chivalric element so typical of sixteenth-century taste,
which in turn was so responsive to the amorous, melancholy
and despairing aesthetic of the Marchese di Pescara,
author of the equally popular madrigal Ancor che col
partire (set to music by Cipriano De Rore). Between
the two instrumental versions of the madrigal Ancidetemi
pur, for harp and harpsichord respectively, I have
included a sung monodic version: this manner of reducing
a polyphonic texture to a single vocal line and continuo
was very common in the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries, as demonstrated by the Codex MS Q34 in Bologna
(which includes only the bass line of the two madrigals
as a continuo part).

This ‘archaic’ aesthetic — after
all, we are talking about poetic and musical works
composed in the first half of the sixteenth century — imparts
a sense of unity to the Italian keyboard literature,
the last exponent of which was Gregorio Strozzi as
late as 1687. Trabaci provides at least two other examples
of such ‘archaism’: in the Canzone Francese
V, based on Arcadelt’s madrigal Dunque credete
ch’io of 1539, and in the madrigal Io mi son
giovinetto, based on the work by Domenico Maria Ferrabosco
of 1542, both in Book I. In Frescobaldi we find neither
the Zefiro theme, which is none other than the Passamezzo
nuovo o moderno (see, among others, Antonio Valente’s
Intavolatura de cimbalo, Napoli, 1576), nor the canti
fermi on the sixteenth-century melody Tenor di Spagna,
which Trabaci calls Tenore di Costanzo Festa.

Moreover Frescobaldi,
with some exceptions (for example the D sharps in
the Fantasia VII), refrains from using notes specific
to chromatic-enharmonic composition, whereas Trabaci
provides a very fine example in Book II: the Toccata
e Ricercare sopra il Cimbalo Cromatico. The cimbalo
cromatico was an instrument with double black keys,
which, however, Trabaci himself declared to be more
limited than the enharmonic instrument, since it
did not have all the keys of the latter ‘to
give major thirds over D sharp’ (per dare Terze
maggiore sopra D. semitonato), i.e. F double sharp.
Therefore this is really a composition for the cimbalo
enharmonico or archicembalo. Which is why he adds the
instruction that on the cembalo cromatico one can resolve
the problem without difficulty: ‘all those thirds
that cannot be made major can be made minor, since
they are not in final cadences’ (tutte quelle
terze, che non si ponno far Maggiore si facciano Minore,
già che non sono Cadenze finale). Modern technology,
however, has made it possible (by using different takes
and changing the meantone tuning) to play the whole
Toccata as if on a cembalo enarmonico. An archicembalo
was made for Alfonso II d’Este in Ferrara and
on this, Bottrigari notes, Luzzaschi and Frescobaldi
were accustomed to play, although the latter did so ‘not
without great study’. It is also possible that
Frescobaldi, and perhaps also Luzzaschi, who died in
1607, examined and played the Vito Trasuntino archicembalo
built for Camillo Gonzaga in 1606, and today in the
Museo Civico in Bologna.

We may assume that Trabaci’s keyboard was ‘short’ (or
scavezza), but with double keys for D/F# and E/G#,
at least judging by the presence of low D and F sharp
in Io mi son giovinetto of Book I and also in Partita
IV of Zefiro of Book II. The short octave is a special
arrangement of the keys in the lowest octave: the four
sharps C#, D#, F#, and G# were omitted, because there
was almost no use for them in the music of that time,
and on organs considerable expense could be spared
by omitting these large and costly pipes.

According to this plan,
the keyboard begins with an E key that plays the
note C, then the F plays F, the F# plays D, the G
plays G, and the G# plays E). From the player’s point of view, Trabaci does not
spare him the more difficult wide stretches between
notes, for which (as for Handel), the nose has often
served me as an extra finger (in the Gagliarda II la
Scabrosetta, whose theme recalls the Bassa Fiamenga,
and the Gagliarda III sopra la Mantovana). Nevertheless
I believe that Trabaci, despite his declared independence
from the limitations of range of the church modes (as
asserted at the head of the Cento Versi), was obliged,
by the mere fact of using score, to write down in a
rigidly polyphonic format what Frescobaldi would have
more conveniently reduced to keyboard tablature. In
concert performance the player is surely free to reduce
such distances and find spacings more suited to the
hand. In the recording, however, I have chosen to play
them exactly as they are written in the score: die
Musikwissenschaft über alles!

The verset form is one
that allows a wide choice of registrations and Trabaci’s harmonic-rhythmic
solutions are at their most ingenious and confident
in these very concise composition types. For the versets
I have ‘troped’ the melodies of the various
Benedicamus Domino with a text of Adam von Fulda that
underlines the expressive character of the individual
modes: ‘the first mode is suited to all, the
second is for the sad, the third is angry, the fourth
is mild, the fifth is for the joyful, the sixth for
those of proven mercy, the seventh for the young, the
eighth for the wise’ (Primus est omnibus, sed
alter tristibus aptus, tertius iratus, quartus dicitur
fieri blandus, quintum de laetis, sextum pietate probatis,
septimus est juvenum, octavus sapientium).

The expressive sense of
the Gregorian modes was described thus by Guido D’Arezzo: ‘The first mode
is serious, the second sad, the third mystic, the fourth
harmonious, the fifth glad, the sixth devout, the seventh
angelic, the eighth the perfect one.’ On the
other hand, Juan de Espinoza, a sixteenth-century writer,
comments: ‘ the first is all glad and has the
power to tame the passions of the spirit...; serious
and with a mournful character is the second; it is
the most fitting to cause tears...; the third is very
effective to urge wrath...; whereas the fourth has
in itself all joy; it urges delight and moderates vice...;
the fifth causes joy and pleasure to those who are
in sadness...; weeping and pious is the sixth...; pleasure
and sadness meet in the seventh...; perforce the eighth
is very glad... " (Treatise of Principles, 1520).

In the various versets
we find the use of melodic formulae (see the Liber
Usualis) to mark the various cadences typical of
the individual modes: ‘the
first, the second … mode starts thus, the flex
is thus and the mediation thus, and thus it finishes’ (primus,
secundus …tonus sic incipitur, sic flectitur
et sic mediatur atque sic finitur). The monotony of
the Gregorian cadences, however, merely underlines
the variety of fantasy of Trabaci’s Baroque manner.
The performing version of the melodies is deliberately
rendered mensurally; and it is also my belief that
the ornamentation in Gregorian solo performance stands
at the origin of much medieval, and even Baroque, embellishment.
In particular the quilisma can be identified with the
hoquetus and with various forms of ornamentation (glissando)
proper to ethnic music, of which the last offshoots
in art music can be identified with the acciaccatura
(upbeat ornamentation). As for the oriscus and the
various repercussiones (see the Liber Usualis: apostropha
numquam sola adhibetur; geminata distropha dicitur;
trigemina, tristropha; et amplius iterari potest),
they surely become the ribattuta (repeated-note ornamentation),
an embellishment that Caccini boasts having invented
and which is found in Trabaci under the name riditta
and in Frescobaldi in the graphic form given by Caccini,
described by Strozzi (1687) in performance as the repetition
of the same note.

In Trabaci the trill is
played from the upper note, contrary to common modern
practice, in which the trill from the upper note
is reserved exclusively for the French and German
schools. Of this there is an example at the end of
the Canzone francese VI of Book I, while of particular
interest is the upper note of the trill with appoggiatura
at the end of the Verso XII del Quarto tono. The
indication of a trill often appears not exactly by
the note to which it refers, but such problems can
be resolved by analogy and, of course, by usage. The
trill is always free and sometimes indicated only by
a ‘T’: in Ancidetemi pur there is a double
trill to be played with resolution; and at the start
of the Cento versi Trabaci declares that when one finds
the letter T one must play the trill always complete
(disteso) together with the riditta. In other words,
to the common trill one must add the Caccini repeated-note
trill (see particularly the end of the Verso Settimo,
Quarto Tono). Like his contemporaries, Trabaci uses
the dot as a fermata sign, as for example in bar 18
of the Toccata IV of Book II, as we later find in the
works of Frescobaldi and Froberger

Trabaci is indeed an extremely
important representative of the famous Neapolitan
School that goes back to the Flemish tradition, of
which Luzzaschi (through his teacher Cipriano de
Rore) and Jean de Macque were the final heirs and
masters in Trabaci’s generation.
The ultimate testimony of keyboard writing in score
was to be Bach’s Art of Fugue: with this work,
continuity with the tradition came full circle.

In conclusion I should
like to thank Oscar Mischiati and Nicola Ferroni
for making available their valuable transcriptions
of Trabaci’s music. Nevertheless
I regret that Mischiati’s work has not been published,
perhaps owing to the problem of deciding how to transcribe
it. The ‘score versus tablature’ dilemma,
however, can be overcome, either by adopting the criterion
of double transcription (as in Frescobaldi’s
Capricci and Fantasie in the modern Suvini-Zerboni
edition, though here the risk is that only the tablature
will be used) or, better still, by resorting to score
(and perhaps tablature) for the Ricercate and tablature
alone for the Toccate and Canzoni francesi: Frescobaldi
docet!

All text
courtesy of Naxos - for further information please visit www.naxos.com

SERGIO
VARTOLO
Sergio Vartolo studied music, organ and harpsichord,
at the Conservatorio of Bologna and graduated at the University
of the same city. He has performed throughout Europe as harpsichordist,
organist, conductor, stage director and singer. His recordings
have been awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik
(Frescobaldi Toccatas), the Choc award by Monde de la Musique
(Frescobaldi Capriccios) and the Diapason d’Or (Luzzaschi
Madrigals). For fourteen years, until 1998, he held the post
of Maestro di Cappella at the Basilica of San Petronio in
Bologna. He is an academician of the famous Accademia Filarmonica
of Bologna, where, among many other great musicians, in 1770
Mozart was received as a member. The Cappella Musicale di
San Petronio di Bologna (officially know as the Cappella
Musicale Arcivescovile di San Petronio), was founded in 1436
by a papal bull from Eugenio IV. It is considered by many
musicologists to be amongst the most prestigious musical
institutions in Italy and one of the most productive artistic
centres in the whole history of music. For Naxos Sergio Vartolo
and the Cappella Musicale di San Petronio di Bologna have
recorded Cavalieri, Palestrina, Perti and two volumes of
baroque laments. They have been particularly successful with
Vecchi’s L’Amfiparnaso: “There is plenty
of gusto here, coupled with a stylish command of the madrigal
settings…I can thoroughly recommend it…” (Early
Music Review) and with three large works by Monteverdi. The
Early Music Review described Sergio Vartolo’s Naxos
recording of Monteverdi’s Ballo Delle Ingrate and Tancredi
e Clorinda as being “ among the most convincing performance
of these works I have heard” whilst a warm and intimate
version of L’Orfeo was assessed by Fanfare thus: “The
singers are excellent and integrated into a carefully prepared
ensemble…You will not do much better at triple the
price”. In addition, Sergio Vartolo has recorded Monteverdi’s
smaller-scale works: the Canzonette (with Patricia Vaccari)and
the same composer’s delightful Scherzi Musicali A Tre
Voci.